Your Turn: Students tell us how they want to change the world

In today’s post we present some student views on changing the world. Check out their ideas below:

Ed to Save the World: Describe your vision of the world you want to live in. What does it look like? What do schools need to teach you so you can make this vision reality?

Antonio: The world would look much less chaotic and we would all be living the good life. We would care for each other instead of kill each other. In order to achieve this we would need to change the way people look at other races, so schools should focus on building respect for all people and teach us how to work together with people who are different from us.

Hilary: It’s very complicated to imagine a world where we have finally achieved our aspirations, but if we were to someday achieve equality, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness the world would be perfect…but then again imperfect at the same time. In some ways I think that people prefer to live in an imperfect world — humans would almost rather live in a world with conflicts. One thing we need to change is our education system. Schools should teach us to fight for our liberty, equality, and pursuit of happiness in a productive way. We should have a chance to take action now with our friends’ and teachers’ help.

Paul: If we as a community were able to create a perfect world, we would have a world where there is no racism, where you don’t have to quit your job because of unfair low pay, people have equal opportunities. It sounds like a utopia but it’s not, it could be reality. It would look this way if we finally see that everyone deserves to be equal in this way. Schools should change how we think and teach how to make opportunities for ourselves.

So what does this mean for us? How do we build schools that truly teach young people to work together with diverse groups? How can we teach them to fight? What would it look like to change how they think? To teach them to make their own opportunities?

As we approach a new school year, and a chance to remake ourselves as educators, these are great questions to ponder.